


driving miss johnson

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: AU Chauffeur, Alternate Universe, Daisy is amazing in any universe, F/M, Romance, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-29
Updated: 2018-03-29
Packaged: 2019-04-14 17:23:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14140854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: AU where Coulson is Quake's chauffeur.





	driving miss johnson

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nausicaa_of_phaeacia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nausicaa_of_phaeacia/gifts).



**1.**

“Let me,” she says, attempting to wipe the blood running down his eye with her scarf (red, to match her dress), which is ridiculous, that scarf costs more than his face, but Phil lets her anyway, something thrilling about having one’s wounds tended by the nation’s most beloved superhero - well, he hasn’t polled, exactly, but he wants to believe Miss Johnson is indeed just that, lest his faith in humanity takes another hit.

“Thank you,” he mumbles, still shaky from the fight.

“It’s the least I can do,” she says.

It’s not the first time a night of driving “Quake” around has turned into somewhat of an adventure. It was in the job description, Miss Johnson had asked for someone who could handle danger, but she didn’t want anyone with pasts affiliations to the police, the army or any government agency - Phil couldn’t blame her for that, and he had his own reasons for taking the job. He didn’t expect much risk, but he didn’t write it off completely. The job description might have suggested he only had to drive her to and from diplomatic missions on behalf of her people, but Phil watched the news, he knew what kind of life his new boss lead. There was “follow that car” night. Phil did quite well that day, as if he had been expecting certain shenanigans, but it didn’t involve any violent confrontation. Well, it did, but only for the bad guys, once Quake caught up with them.

She knew Phil was familiar with her reputation. His first night on the job - United Nations, easy job, but impressive nonetheless - he tried to call her, tentatively, jokingly, “Miss Quake”, and she had asked him to call her “Daisy”. Phil could only compromised to “Miss Johnson” and he could tell she didn’t like that. She doesn’t like formalities - which is ironic, given that Phil only gets to see her because she’s involved in very formal affairs.

Another time Miss Johnson left the party she was attending and had to hurriedly changed into her superhero gear in the back of the car. “Wait, I’ll put up the partition,” Phil told her as soon as he saw slip the strap of her dress down her shoulder. The woman chuckled, “I shared a room with five other girls as a kid, I don’t mind,” she explained. “Well, I _didn’t_ ,” he pointed out - it’s not that seeing a woman undress was such a scandal to him, it’s that he didn’t think it a great way to build trust with your employer, especially when you know your employer is already ogled as it is, on the media, on internet boards. He rolled up the partition.

But all the adventure he had seen around the city’s foremost Inhuman had stayed in the periphery, or more accurately in the rear view mirror of his car. Until tonight.

“You shouldn’t get involved in fights with superheroes,” she is telling him, the _superhero_ said a bit mockingly, as if she is hesitating to call herself that. She finishes wiping the blood off Phil’s face. She’s very careful. “And you shouldn’t get hurt for the likes of me?”

“ _The likes of you_?” he repeats, frowning. 

She looks down, like she didn’t expect him to react to that. She wraps the scarf around her knuckle, playing with it, fidgety. There are darker stains over the red of the cloth.

“It’s ruined, I’m sorry,” Phil says. 

"What? No, don't worry about that. Your face-"

"Is a lot less expensive," he says, and rubs his cheek, and chuckles. 

It alarms her, but it also makes her smile.

"I'll tell you a secret," she says, holding up the scarf. "The clothes I wear to these things? Not that expensive." He arches an eyebrow - he could have sworn... "I'm just very good at tracking down... well, let's say, they're not _original_."

Phil has been working for the woman for three months now.

She's still full of surprises.

 

**2.**

“I thought you’d have quit by now,” she says, slipping into the back seat like always but not like always, something different this time, an acknowledgement that something has changed.

Phil stares at her from his front mirror before answer.

“I’m not that easily discouraged out of a good job,” he tells her.

He can tell she’s pleased.

She’s wearing a black dress tonight. Perhaps it’s easier to hide the blood like that, he wonders. He wonders what happened to the red scarf. Did she throw it away?

He starts the car. It’s the best moment of his day, when Miss Johnson gets into his car. It’s the worst moment of his day, when he leaves her at home at the end of the night.

“Yeah but… You didn’t sign up for this,” she is still arguing.

“I kind of signed up for this, when I agreed to drive Quake, superhero, to her dates in high society.”

“ _High society_ ,” she snorts. “I’d much rather go eat in that greasy spoon diner a couple of blocks from here.”

“Why don’t you?” Phil offers. “I know a place that’s much better than that diner.”

“What?”

“I’ve driven you to enough of these to know it’d probably be okay if you skip one,” he tells her. She looks unconvinced, she looks guilty just to be thinking about it. Workaholic. He understand that. “You work very hard, everyone knows that.”

She smiles. “You’re a very bad influence, Mr Coulson.”

He punches the new address into the GPS.

He drives her. Of course he’s done that dozens of times, there shouldn’t anything strange or exciting about that. But it feels different. He is driving her because they are going to have dinner. Together. He’s not just _driving her_ , he’s driving the both of them.

In twenty minutes he’s sitting across her in a diner both, her impossibly elegant dress and his strangely formal black suit likely to stand out among the other customers. Phl doesn’t care.

“Mmm, this is very good,” Miss Johnson says, mouthful of burger.

“You should try the desserts, that’s where this place shines.”

“I’ll get there, I’m so hungry,” she replies. “I never eat anything at those parties.”

“Why not?”

She looks flustered for a moment. “This is stupid but the food, it looks so fancy, I don’t dare-”

Phil chuckles.

She narrows her eyes at him; he knows she has the power to squash him like a bug if she wanted, but somehow he can’t bring himself to be scared. He doesn’t want her to think he was laughing at her or her manner, but her slight annoyance at him is pretty amusing to stare at.

And he does.

Stare.

At her.

For a bit at least.

The way he’d never dare stare at her from out of his driving mirror.

“So why did you accept the job of being my chauffeur?” she asks, changing the subject, her mouth a bit suspicious of that last word, as if it were something too fancy for her as well.

“I aged out the Fire Brigade,” he replies dryly.

“You don’t look aged out of anything,” she says, and it’s casual but it also sounds like purposeful kindness. “But why this job? Why drive an infamous Inhuman around?”

“I like cars,” he says.

“That one I believe.”

“And you asked for a human,” he adds. Miss Johnson gives. “And you asked for a human driver. You specified you wanted a human driver, not Inhuman.”

“Didn’t that bother you?” she asks. “Didn’t you find the idea… degrading?”

Al lot of people out there would say that - a lot of those are the same people Quake is trying to take down before they hurt someone.

“I thought it was smart of you. Very smart.”

“Smart… not many people would call me that.”

“You hacked six different secret organizations to discover who your parents were. I can’t imagine anyone calling you anything but.”

She leans back on her side of the booth. “I see you’ve been keeping up with my press.”

Phil looks away. 

“I like to know who I’m working for,” he excuses his unprofessional curiosity. To be totally fair, his curiosity had started before he started working for Miss Johnson.

“Well, I’d rather you _got to know me_ , and not just read about me. Okay?”

He focuses on his milkshake for a moment, processing the request.

“Yeah,” he tells her. “Deal.”

 

**3.**

“You should have been driving me in this all along,” Daisy says, softly wolf-whistling the car in front of her.

Phil looks up and this is the first time he sees her in casual clothes - at least in person - it’s always fancy dress for the galas or her superhero suit. She’s wearing a pair of old-looking jeans and a red flannel shirt, plaid, when she enters the garage. The sun is directly behind her, starting to set.

“How did you find me?” he asks and then he shakes his head and waves the question again, such an idiot he is.

He watches her look around the place, walking circles are him and Lola.

It feels incongruous, and a little bit dangerous, having her here, in his daily life. Like that night she fell asleep after her party, asleep on the back seat - she snored, Phil registered with amusement - and he had to get out of the car and around to her side, shake her awake, the way he tried to be gentle, wrapping one hand on her shoulder, but it still felt like crossing a line. That’s how it feels like, having her in front of him today. His day off, his car, and her. Mixing up things. 

Then again he was the one who suggested the had dinner together the other day.

“What are you doing here, Daisy?”

“Oh, so it’s first name basis now?” she asks.

He gives her a sideways smile.

“I’m off the clock,” he says.

Daisy shoves her hands in her pockets and shrugs. “So am I,” she says. Then she gestures towards the car. “Is she all right?”

“Lola’s fine, just some maintenance work,” he replies. She raises an amused eyebrow at the name. “She doesn’t look like it, but she can keep up.”

Daisy’s eyes don’t leave his when she says “She does look like it.”

He still wants to tell her. What the best part of his day is, what the worst part of his day is.

“If Lola is ready, maybe you can drive me around?” Daisy suggests.

There’s something very guarded about the question, as if putting it in ambiguous terms protected her from potential rejection. Phil admits he has enjoyed the ambiguity between them for these past three months. He didn’t want to face rejection, and in his case ridicule. He wasn’t sure he had any right to even -

He shakes his head.

“I told you, I’m off the clock,” he says.

The way Daisy’s face falls with naked disappointment, it makes his chest ache, almost enough to make him feel guilty for this. But it’s just a couple of seconds, until Phil slips the car keys into her hand, brushing his fingers across her palm very intentionally. He gives her a smirk - he knows he’s being a bit mean - as Daisy opens her fingers to discover the keys.

“ _You_ drive,” Phil tells her.

And she does.

And it feels…

Right.

Like the best part of his day, of any day.


End file.
